New research shows people are less likely to survive a gunshot wound today than they were nearly 15 years ago, according to a study based on data from the Denver Health Medical Center.

The study, which was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association on June 12, tracked the type and severity of traumatic injuries for nearly 30,000 trauma patients who were treated at Denver Health from 2000 to 2013. The new research found that on average, the death rate for gunshot victims increased by 6 percent every two years, while the death rates from other types of trauma either remained stable or decreased.

Gunshot victims’ wounds are also becoming more severe, and the number of wounds per person has increased. In 2000, the median number of gunshot wounds per person was one to two. Today it is three to four, said Angela Sauaia, a co-author of the study and a professor of public health, medicine and surgery at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

While the research cannot be generalized, and Sauaia could not say exactly why this was happening, she did speculate that “… people are using weapons that can shoot more bullets faster, so they can produce several wounds. We are seeing more patients with more wounds, and the wounds they have are more severe.”

Jeffrey Sankoff, associate medical director at the Denver Health Medical Center Emergency Department, was not involved in the study, but he has worked at Denver Health for 15 years. He says that, compared to when he started, he sees more gunshot wounds per person and wounds that are more severe.

“Each bullet has the capacity to do a large amount of damage. When you add sequential bullets to the victims, then you have that much more damage,” Sankoff said. “Often the bullet doesn’t go in a straight line: It disintegrates. It ricochets.”

Sankoff said that he has seen a gunshot victim who was hit in the leg, but the bullet was found in the abdomen. The travel through the body can cause irreparable damage.

On Monday, the Senate rejected four gun control proposals inspired by the Orlando massacre. Sauaia said that while there is obvious contention over gun control in this country, there are certain things she thinks everyone can agree on, including keeping children and mentally unstable people from having access to unlocked and loaded guns.

“For me it’s kind of impossible to imagine that my phone knows where I am in the middle of Disney World and can tell me which line is the shortest, but that we cannot make a smart gun,” Sauaia said. “We can do things to avoid guns from being in the wrong hands. We can do better.”

Sauaia added that while some anti-gun legislation proponents may argue that guns aren’t responsible for killing people, and that people are responsible, she disagrees, “People with no guns don’t kill people.”

Updated June 22, 2016 at 1:30 p.m.:The following corrected information has been added to this article: Because of a reporting error, this story has been updated to name the University of Colorado campus where Angela Sauaia is a professor and to reflect that the study on gunshot wounds that she co-authored was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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